2024 #5 The Zenful Garden

Subdivision: Ranchos de Placitas
Owner/ Designer: Yvette and Antowanette Wright

Garden Type or Feature: So far, they have established trees like Russian olive, silver leaf oak, and Japanese maple; and smaller grapes, mullein, coleus, succulents, hostas, calla Lillies, iris, tulips, and red-hot pokers. Yvette also enjoys growing herbs and flowering annuals from seeds given to her by friends. [these are examples she mentions: larkspur, evening sunflower, old fashioned, sweet William, nasturtium, petunia, sweet pea, Siberian wallflower, dahlia, elephant ear, caladium, four o’clock, chocolate flower, bachelor button]

Artist in the Garden:  Karen Melody Shatar.

Education in the Garden: The Bernalillo Master Composters will be demonstrating techniques in plant-based composting and the use of organic mulches to build healthy soils.

Description: Yvette Bennett-Wright has an artist’s love of color, something that was seriously lacking on the land around her Ranchos de Placitas home when she and wife Antowanette arrived two years ago. Aside from a healthy ring of junipers, the property looked abandoned when they bought it, Yvette said, “but I had a vision to turn it into a ‘zenful’ oasis.”

At the time, she didn’t realize how ambitious that vision was, given the site’s arid high desert location and the couple’s lack of gardening experience. Both women travel extensively with the film industry, Antowanette as asset manager and Yvette as art department coordinator, leaving them with little time to think about horticulture.

Landscapers got them started by replacing dilapidated walkways and helping them clear out overgrown cactus, bushes, bamboo and weeds. Then Yvette got busy educating herself online and with the help of local gardeners. The pair do all the hardscaping and planting themselves, so they have learned by trial and error about the challenges of hungry wildlife and the dehydrating effects of heat, wind, and low humidity. 

To brighten her view in the meantime, Yvette introduced color by “painting” the acreage with gravel in eye-grabbing shades of turquoise, white, sienna and black. These abstract rock beds now serve as the landscape’s backbone while she and Antowanette continue to carve out one garden bed at a time. 

So far, they have established trees like Russian olive, silver leaf oak, and Japanese maple; and smaller grapes, mullein, coleus, succulents, hostas, calla Lillies, iris, tulips, and red-hot pokers. Yvette also enjoys growing herbs and flowering annuals from seeds given to her by friends. [these are examples she mentions: larkspur, evening sunflower, old fashioned, sweet William, nasturtium, petunia, sweet pea, Siberian wallflower, dahlia, elephant ear, caladium, four o’clock, chocolate flower, bachelor button]